Explore the AI of Call of Duty: Black Ops III at PlayStation Experience

We may rarely think about them, but A.I. systems can fundamentally alter the gameplay experience. In order to build Call of Duty: Black Ops 3‘s four-player cooperative campaign, the team at Treyarch had to completely overhaul its A.I. technology and rethink how it influences combat, storytelling, and level design, all the while maintaining the cinematic immersion that the series is known for.

This Saturday, join me and members of Treyarch’s engineering, design, animation, and story teams as we discuss the making of Black Ops 3, the fundamentals of artificial intelligence, and how it can shape the future of games during the Call of Duty: Black Ops 3: Unlocking the Potential of A.I. panel.

Treyarch isn’t good at programming A.I., the bots in BO3 offline multiplayer are stupid and don’t utilize the new mechanics such as swimming. Seems like all they can do is make good stories about A.I. Ghosts and Advanced warfare had way better bots.

I could not agree more. The bot A.I. in this game is a HUGE step backwards from that in Ghosts and even Advanced Warfare. I think Treyarch needs to take a long hard look at what I.W. did with Ghosts. Here’s just a few issues:

– they run around in a cluster all the time. Seems like their pathing is limited.

– they are all too equally skilled. This results in them struggling to get any streaks. Other games have fixed this by having bots of different skill levels.

– they all seem to run the exact same streak set-up

– they never shoot down or destroy streaks. Opposite of B.O. II where they’d blast your UAVs out of the sky immediately.

– they are super cheap on the higher difficulties. I want challenging bots which don’t have wallhacks and aimbots. They will 180º spin on you and head shot you every single time. Watch the killcams and you’ll be sick.

– despite being super cheap, on even Veteran they are cannon fodder in objective modes. They can’t seem to concentrate on objectives and shooting at the same time.

– a bot will shoot you and if you run around a corner it will completely forget about you.